On Monday, the 27th of September, 2021, the Department of Justice announced that six members of the Nine Trey Gangsters popularly known as NTG have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organization Act.
Out of the 10 individuals that were charged with the different conspiracy counts involving the confluenced intention to and the actual manifestation of violent activities, drug trafficking, with particular drugs such as as marijuana, methamphetamine and Xanax. The six individuals who pled guilty includes: Tyrone Clark also known as Tight Eye, Joseph Riley III who is also known as Joe Blow, Gary Sartor who is popularly referred to as G-Stacks, Patrick Caple known as Zoe, Brandon Asberry who is referred to in the gang circle as B5 and Micheal Jackson who is commonly referred to as MJ.
The DOJ release stated sadly how members of the gang carried out their nefarious activities without respect and with indifference to human life, both as it regards their drug related activity and their violent activities. The unfortunate irony as was stated by the Acting U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine, was that though the gang offered a means of making money illicitly to their members and also gave them a sense of acceptance and inclusion, the same gang would constantly target their members in acts of violence that were based on the impulse and caprices of the gang leaders.
The organisational structure of the gang is defined with a well structured heirachy that places each member on a particular floor. Four of the offenders (Clark, Riley, Sartor, and Caple) were all in the rank of the fifth floor, members of this floor are given the responsibility of overseeing the members below them and giving reports to gang leadership above them. The other two individuals Jackson and Asberry are both in the ranks of third and second floor respectively. Persons in the rank of the third floor are given the task of planning and coordinating their violent activities including planning wars with other rival gangs and providing weapons. Members of the second floor are tasked with recieivng collections from gang members and overseeing meetings. All the six individuals were however part of the fire line which is a subdivision of the hierachical structure.
The activities of these offenders were dismantled and disrupted by the FBI led Safe Streets Gang Task Force and its state and local partners, and this task force has assured residents that thier job of engaging criminal activities and halting them is a continuous one and would very soon result in safe streets. The brief history of the gang was given by the Erskine when he detailed how the NTG began as a division of the United Bloods Nation. The NTG began in New york prisons but have gone on to gainnational prominence. The organisation has constantly been engaging in criminal actvities such as murder, assaults, robbery, firearms possession, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, drug trafficking, extortion. Their influence has run so deep that some of the individuals who pleaded guilty (Gary Sartor, Patrick Caple, and Michael Jackson) were incacerated during the time of their commission of the offence.
The Acting U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine has stated that each of the six defendants would be sentenced accordingly in the coming months by the Judge Amy Totenberg of the United States District Court.